Links+ Hot, Lukewarm, Cold

Oooh look at this beautiful actress roundtable cover for The Hollywood Reporter. Can't wait to see the full video.

Okay on to the link roundup since we haven't done this in some time the news is a mix of brand new to 'oops, already shoulda shared that!'

 Piping Hot 

/Film early numbers on the success of Disney+ though you'll have to take it with a grain of salt as the numbers are provided solely by Disney (just like Netflix who is free to brag on the rare occassions when they do share numbers but there's no way to know if the numbers are accurate)

Coming Soon Juliette Lewis and Mia Goth are co-starring in a female action flick called Mayday

After the jump The Little Mermaid, new projects for Paul Thomas Anderson and Damien Chazelle, Kristen Bell singing, and much much more... 

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Review: Octavia Spencer lets loose with "Ma"

by Sean Donovan

In an age where critics praise a generation of thoughtful, innovative, and dazzlingly styled horror films, a deceptively basic package like Ma --unconcerned with winning good reviews, elevating the genre, or acquiring a fancy boutique label like A24 -- is uniquely refreshing. Ma’s jump scares are familiar, its plotting is predictably iffy, its logic and emotional contexts for its supporting characters even more so- but goddamn it, it’s fun.

The ‘fun’ comes from feeding off the joy of Octavia Spencer inhabiting domestic horror-thriller, Hand That Rocks the Cradle realness. No longer is Spencer smiling on a gilded stage, frozen while Peter Farrelly and Nick Vallelonga accept prizes for socially regressive trash to which she’s somehow attached. Octavia’s back baby, and this time she’s got hell to raise and teens to terrify....

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"What's Eating Gilbert Grape" - Still Wonderful!

Here's Eric Blume to celebrate the 25th anniversary of What's Eating Gilbert Grape, currently available for rental on most services...

It's now been a quarter century since the release of Lasse Hallstrom’s What’s Eating Gilbert Grape. That deeply felt family drama earns its tears not through sentimentality but through true sentiment.  It’s arguably Hallstrom’s best film, and likely the best performances Johnny Depp and Leonardo DiCaprio have ever given. I'm happy to report, after a recent revisit, that it only looks better with age.

Hallström lays out the canvas of these characters’ lives with none of the condescension or cliché that we often see in films about small-town America, and he keeps everything fizzy and surprising...

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Months of Meryl: August Osage County (2013)

John and Matthew are watching every single live-action film starring Meryl Streep.  

#45 —Violet Weston, the cancer-stricken, drug-addicted matriarch of an Oklahoma family.

MATTHEW: Tracy Letts’ high-octane, Pulitzer Prize-winning family drama August: Osage County was the toast of the 2007-2008 Broadway season, which made a cinematic adaptation all but inevitable and the star involvement of Meryl Streep an equally foregone conclusion. The vituperative, pill-popping Violet Weston is the crowning achievement of Letts’ play and arguably the meatiest dramatic role to come along for sexagenarian actresses in the past 15 years. The part has been previously interpreted on stage by the Tony-winning Deanna Dunagan (who originated the character in the initial Steppenwolf production), Estelle Parsons, and Phylicia Rashad, any one of whom could have bowled us over in an alternate film, as might have rumored candidates like Jessica Lange, Sissy Spacek, and Glenn Close. This isn’t to take away a single merit from Streep’s no-holds-barred work, but rather acknowledge that Streep herself is the rare and defiant exception who proves the rule that actresses over the age of 50 are anathema to Hollywood’s gatekeepers.

Before falling in love with the eye of the camera, Streep was first and foremost a creature of the theater...

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The Link Persuasive

• Coming Soon Juliette Lewis is joining the Roseanne spinoff sitcom The Conners
• MNPP ACK! Somehow I missed the news that there's a new documentary coming about Montgomery Clift and it's playing at NewFest next month
• Awards Daily Willem Dafoe and Paul Greengrass are getting tributes at the Gotham Awards
• AV Club Eric Idle confirms a longstanding rumor about Carrie Fisher and Harrison Ford in a scene from Empire Strikes Back...

Lots more after the jump including Judi Dench's frustration, Wicked's anniversary, Chris Pine's penis, Glenn Close's movies, JK Rowling's foot-in-mouth problem, and English language remakes of foreign hits which are fine as they are (sigh)...

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